Happy New Year! Boycott the Basket in 2022!
Send someone on my list some money before the ball drops! (My first Advent Calendar for Giving Roundup just in time for 2022.)
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“Tuesday Giving” solicitations began to pile up in my inbox just as Advent was getting under way and electronic dispatches from my stripped for parts, POC-scrubbed, then force-merged erstwhile Brooklyn parish were newly lousy with even more “donation” buttons. Noticing a preponderance of diocesan appeal shake-down action on all forms of social media led me to become ornery. Dozens of emails came in: publications that don’t invite submissions, the wealthy one of alma maters whose alumni office declines to follow me on social media and has never promoted anything I do, a handful of non-profits for whom I toiled pro-bono (I do send them money!) and even organizations to which I would never dream of supporting — male supremacist supremacist Catholic publications, white supremacist Catholic orgs! Zionist and (so-called) “Right to Life” groups, even — They were all, metaphorically, turning me upside-down as a high school bully might invert a meek kid so as to capture the lunch money falling from their pockets. In addition, something was going on with Advent Calendars. There were “count-the-days-till-Jesus’s birthday” calendars for high end rums, spa treatments, cheeses … The solicitation trolley is rounding the bend this week. Now that Christmas Day has passed, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about my 2021 Advent Calendar for Giving.
Although I got the idea before Advent began, it was a few days in before I started the list. My November 29th recommendation was Jhpiego, one of whose focuses, among other areas of concentration, is maternal and infant health in several nations on four continents.
For November 30th, I exhorted folks to consider sending support to 826NYC. I (former teacher) worked as a volunteer at their after-school homework help center located in a secret library in a store that sells Superhero supplies. This model is so important — 826, which has a number of centers in cities in the United States provides children (k-12) who would (in most cases) not otherwise have access to after-school programming or tutoring, offers these students community and academic support in friendly environment.
December 1st pick was the Catholic Worker. I have worked a few shifts through the years and attended a talk or service or two at Joseph House through the years — and my lovely mensch of son worked there during vacations and summers for a few years (I am always delighted to note!) — but I was middle aged when I really learned what they do, how they worked, and who Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin were. The Worker does not don’t fund-raise — they trust the universe and God to provide. That’s Dorothy Day’s philosophy persisting and they don’t really have a website but I have always loved the newspaper to which you can still subscribe for $.01.
My December 2 Advent Calendar for Giving recommendation was Catholics 4 Choice. Here’s why: Abortion has existed for thousands of years. Abortion can not be stopped. It can only be made more lethal for the women who have these procedures, and more harmful to poor families. 50 % of Catholics support a woman’s right to a legal, medical abortion. Most other Christian sects and most Jews reject entirely the rhetoric that casts abortion as a kind of infanticide.
“Pro life” has been a misnomer since the phrase’s inception.
For December 3rd , I went with CHIPS Park Slope in Brooklyn. “CHIPS” is an acronym with the word “Christian” in it. Every house of worship and oodles of atheists in the Brooklyn neighborhood wherein CHIPS is housed (and wherein I live) supports them. They host well-prepared lunches for people who need them, and have a beautiful crew of pregnant people, new moms and babies and staff dwelling and working on the premises at Frances House upstairs. I love this place.
SNAP — Survivors’ Network for those Abused by Priests has been at it a while. As one who does those work on a kind of pro-bono, amateur determinedly incomplete basis, I can attest to the fact that it is so very difficult to track all of the Catholic Church’s clergy sex crimes and malfeasance. They do this. It’s “God’s work.” They need y(our) support. My December 4th Advent Calendar for Giving choice was SNAP Network.
My December 5th donation suggestion was Housing Works. They came into existence in response to the AIDS Crisis and have kept on going strong, especially in relation to their focus on homelessness. Their bookstore and shops are superb. The aforementioned son did a semester internship with them a few years ago and his supervisor there was a more like a Reverend with a bit of movie star thrown in than a retail manager. I heart everything about this org.
For December 6th, I recommended considering sending money and love to Roman Catholic Women Priests. I will have a great deal to say about this organization in my religion memoir, but in the meantime, this: RCWP trains Roman Catholic women priests. If you are a manchild throwback male supremacist saying “But women can’t be priests,” just sit down. They already are. Roman Catholic women priests preach, administer sacraments and life cycle rites without salaries and without permanent houses of worship. The one I know best is astonishingly well-trained in Divinity studies, theology, and bible.
This is a good time to interrupt myself to note that, for the most part, I tried to keep this list close to home — close to home geographically —I was born on the island of Manhattan and still live in New York City! — and “close to home” in the sense that I’m still Catholic interested in Catholic understanding of the Gospels. Via my Advent Calendar for Giving I tried to provide alternatives to Catholic giving for Catholics who want to support groups/agencies/orgs that do not kick back to the bishops. That’s why I tried to add a few Catholic groups.
What I like most about Reconnect Brooklyn (for December 7th) is that it is a project born and ongoing in Bed Stuy Brooklyn, which was not long ago one of New York City’s most forgotten neighborhoods and which in recent years has undergone extreme, hyper-rapid gentrification. The Passionist priest who got Reconnect going has been an activist concerned about pooe people in Brooklyn for a long time. Reconnect has existed for several years, there have been obstacles along the way, but Reconnect is still kicking — and growing: providing young men from “the neighborhood” with training, mentorship and jobs. They had a cafe for a a while, but the focus at present seems to be on graphics and producing mighty artful merch!
My December 8th pick was Women’s Ordination Conference. There is just no way the temple gets cleansed without the ordination of women. Packing the College of Cardinals and parishes throughout the world is the institutional Roman Catholic Church’s best shot at arising out of the mire. As long as the institution tolerates all-male priesthood, it forfeits any moral authority to oppose discrimination based on race, disability, gender / sexual identity, nationality or creed. The Roman Catholic Church can not oppose bigotry while promulgating, practicing and enshrining it as inviolable, immutable teaching. I gave up contributing to parish once I realized I was funding misogyny. The women’s ordination movement deserves and needs my support.
One of the things I like best about ProPublica, my December 10th Advent for Giving non-profit, is that they did what the Catholic Church has so long refused to do when they created a data base of all priests throughout the United States who have been credibly accused of child rape and sex. Apart from their tracking of abusive clergy, Pro Publica is one of the few and best organizations that still supports and makes public high quality data/investigative journalism.
Medecins Sans Frontiers /Doctors without Borders (December 11) needs no introduction. They heal people all over the world without imposing their politics/religion on those they support.
For December 12, as a Catholic, as an expression of my Catholicism, I chose Dignity USA. There’s no way to say this politely, LGBTQ Catholics are tortured by and die of homophobic and transphobic teaching. Some make it through. Some even become priests and bishops, but most catechesis of children, whether it does so implicitly or outright, teachings LGBTQ children and adolescents that they are fundamentally disordered, that their erotic experience and lovemaking are sinful in every case and that the families they build, in love, are unworthy of consecration. The institutional Catholic Church is happy to keep LGBTQ Catholics in the pews — for financial reasons, mostly, in my view and, of late, news story after news story detailing some teacher or music director who loses a job for having a same sex partner or spouse breaks. Dignity has been supporting gay Catholics under siege for decades.
MY December 12th recommendation is Repairers of the Breach. I love this group and Rev. Dr. William Barber whose work so moved me when I read it in Divinity School in a class called
”Bible in the Public Square.” “Repairers” labors under the belief that morality is not just for church.
I began writing about American politics on Indie Theology in about 2016 when it became clear that the institutional Catholic Church in the United States was forging an alliance with American right-wing politics (e.g, supporting a white Supremacist, male supremacist.misogynist, neofascist agenda) as well as with aiuthoritarian leaders and their ultra-conservative orthodox churches internationally. (Bannon, Putin, et al) I wasn’t surprised when Kavanaugh or Barrett were confirmed. I recognized, even by the way Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were characterized in mainstream media, that the election of a GOP candidate in 2016 would result in a court that might not say “no” to theocracy and Roman Catholic integralism. The Federalist Society is greatly populated by Opus Dei adherents who believe, for the most part, in a Christian church of no Christ in which gay-bashing, forced birth, carrying guns for Jesus, just wars, white supremacy and a permanent underclass that is houseless, hungry, sick and under-educated are the American way. On December 13, I chose to highlight the Brennan Center , which publishes in-depth studies/reports on Constitutional policy and related justice issues. I particularly admire their work in the area of Voting Rights.
I was very lucky about eight years ago, to spend a day a week traveling from Brooklyn to the Bronx to study with a middle-schooler whose mom was serving a sentence in prison. The young student, a really smart, funny, beautiful young girl, was trying to test into a New York City prep school a the time. I was able to learn about this opportunity through the Osborne Association. I really love the work they do. The Osborne Association recognizes that mass incarceration really IS the “New Jim Crow” and they know that people who are able to continue to love, connect with and respect the so often heroic journeys that their incarcerated beloveds undergo do much better after their sentences are served. There are many wonderful non-profit organizations who need our support for their amazing work on behalf of incarcerated people and their families. (Brennan Center and Innocence Project, both Advent Calendar for giving picks, take up this work.)
God’s Love We Deliver was my December 15th Advent calendar for giving notion. They are a non-sectarian organization which got its start during the AIDS Crisis in New York City. They are, in my view, Gospel-inspired angels in action.
This is an idiosyncratic list — a bit Catholic-centric, New York-centric, and in some instances inspired by organizations with which I have worked. One of the founders of Women’s Refugee Commission was my cousin, friend, and sometimes mentor Catherine O’Neill. She helped to found WRC because she believed women refugees (and their children) often fail to obtain the kind of (already insufficient) protections and supports that men needing to find safety receive. Cathy’s focus in so many matters was global. I might argue that some of that came from her early Catholic formation.
One of the reasons it was important to me, as a Catholic, to have this women’s group (along with December 2nd suggestion, Jhpiego) is that Catholic teaching as it relates to gender and the male supremacy Catholics support ramify throughout the globe, making it even more difficult than it already is for women to thrive as students, earners, parents. Vatican teaching on gender causes avoidable suffering, death, poverty throughout the world. I see my continued support of groups that aim to offer aid to women Catholic evangelization subjugates as a kind of productive penance. Perhaps it is a way to work off the sin of complicity and consent.
I wanted to put a political campaign on the list and who better to include by a woman pol so Catholic that even America Magazine published her! So for December 17th, I went with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. My December 18th choice was the Innocence Project an organization whose focus is upon overturning wrongful convictions. December 19th was International Rescue Committee. IRC has a strong focus of late on helping Afghan Refugees.
Our Brain Bank, my December 20th rec, is personal to me. The brainy, beautiful, hilariously witty Jessica Morris, a friend to my family and me, founded Our Brain Bank when she was diagnosed/ sidelined / slowed down just a little by glioblastoma. Our Brain Bank is a patient-led movement that proposes to enable patients caregivers and physicians to track symptoms and treatments. “We focus on one of the most complex and aggressive brain cancers — glioblastoma — because overcoming one of the toughest cancers may be the key to cracking them all.”
The December 21st Advent calendar for giving recommendation is Food Bank for New York.
The December 22 Advent calendar for giving choice was the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project cares for LGBTQ youth in numerous ways. I felt so strongly about pointing to thier amazing work during Advent because I believe the work of the Trevor Project offers promise for a direct (one hopes) corrective response to the damage done by religious organizations (e.g. Roman Catholic, Christian Evangelical) churches that promulgate homophobia and transphobia.
I did not know much about HIAS, my December 23rd pick, until just a few weeks ago when I sat in to receive some training thanks to a the leadership of a Brooklyn Episcopal Church. Founded in 1881 on the Lower East Side of New York, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society started out helping Jews escaping pogroms in Russia and Easter Europe and and anti-semitic riots in the United States. As a Catholic member of an interfaith Jewish family, I wanted to include one of the numerous organizations devoted to doing humanitarian work. The training session itself was a fine one and I hope to get more involved with HIAS in short time.
Finally, I thought, on the last day of Advent, Christmas Eve, to suggest that a good place to reallocate donate that “Boycott the Basket” surplus might be a park. I chose Prospect Park Alliance because it’s free, open to anyone, ten degrees cooler than the rest of the world in August, as beautiful as any place anywhere in the fall and spring and that our experience of parks teaches us so much about the connection between spirit and flesh, creation and peace, science and art —
Again, this is a shaggy catalog of my personal favorites and whims. There are so many organizations and individuals doing so much good work. The big message is that your parish doesn’t own anything. Your diocese does. Anything you donate to your “good” parish can be seized by your bishop and every nickel is fungible.
Catholics who are no longer comfortable funding the bishops can continue to care for those in need by making financial contributions to organizations that operate with oversight and which do not require those interested in sharing their “treasure” to fund corruption, bigotry, greed and oppression.
Why not celebrate the advent of 2022 by sending some love and surplus “boycott the bishops” money to one organization on this list — or to one on your own list?
Happy New Year! Wishing you peace, love, wisdom, health & justice in 2022,
Michele
12/31/2021
NYC